


Wake Up

by MomentumDeferred



Series: The *other* Sunshineverse(s) [9]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Luke Cage (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - Biological Warfare, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Gen, Neurological Disorders, Speech Disorders, Sunshineverse, Survival, Terminal Illnesses, feral!Matt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 08:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8366143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentumDeferred/pseuds/MomentumDeferred
Summary: There's no-one better suited as a zombie handler than a dude with unbreakable skin, to say the least.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something I fiddled with for a few weeks after enjoying the first season of Luke Cage. [Beguile](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile) nudged me toward posting it on AO3, so here it is. Timeline is around the last half of Sunshine. Most likely AU, but I really wanted to write Luke in the universe, and I had fun playing around with him and the idea of what he could do, so... here it is. 
> 
> I hope you like it, and if you're unfamiliar with the verse and/or unsure of what the hell is going on here, it might be helpful to take a look at [Sunshine](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4217547) first.

He'd seen traps like it before—fishing line and rope, bungee cords and dog chains, but never razor wire.

It looked like the feral had been caught for a while before Luke got there, judging by the perimeter of blood it'd scuffed into the dusty floor as it heaved around, trying to pry the wire off of itself. Luke watched as it thrashed to and fro in an attempt to get itself loose, and all it accomplished was tangling itself up into the trap even tighter, the wire constricting one arm against the opposite leg, making the razor dig deeper into its skin. Drops of blood splattered and smeared everywhere while the feral's furious snarling began to turn into frantic, pained whines.

This trap wasn't intended to capture, Luke realized. It was intended to kill. He paused at the outer edge of the building, where one wall had crumpled and fallen away, where the feral had likely entered in order to get to the bait—which still sat, unclaimed, amongst the smears of blood.

The feral itself didn't seem to take much notice of Luke, all twisted up and face-down, tossing its head, panting and whimpering. Its clothes were torn in a dozen places, and it looked like the only thing that had prevented its throat from getting ripped open was some kind of handkerchief around its neck.

Luke couldn't see what it was doing until its head jerked hard to one side and he saw fresh blood. He wished he could still wince. The feral was trying to chew the razor wire apart, and was succeeding about as much as could be expected from a patchwork creature with the heart of a panicked animal but the body of a terrified human.

Ducking his head, he slipped inside the building, bending down to collect the bait—a dusty candy bar—off of the floor. Chocolate. Yeah, Jersey was here. He'd traded a box of the damn candy to them himself—and the whiskey he'd gotten in return hadn't even been watered down. Why they were trying to murder this feral instead of catching it was a mystery that he wasn't too sure he wanted to solve.

It wailed and spat blood out onto the floor, wriggling around, gnawing with what seemed like great care at another section of its snare that was a little less razor and a bit more wire. Luke frowned as he watched, stuffing the candy bar into his pocket as he kept his distance. The feral ended up with another mouthful of blood but kept going anyway. Its whole face was screwed up already, lips peeled and bleeding, probably missing a tooth or two or a chunk of tongue. Jersey had wanted it to hurt.

He scuffed his feet on the floor, making plenty of noise as he circled the feral slowly. It took a long moment to notice him, lifting its head from the wire with fear on its face, like a deer caught up in a wildfire.

After a short moment, it finally seemed to notice how close Luke was, although Luke was pretty sure the feral was looking right at him. Panic and pain was what made them animals the most, not the virus, not the brain damage—Luke knew it every time he approached one that was ensnared, and this one was no different. The whining turned into sharp yowls of terror, and it barked out a harsh pile of nonsense in Luke's direction, heaving backwards in an attempt to get away. Its right arm was constricted against its left leg and the movement dug the wire in deeper; the yowl became a yelp, the nonsense became a strangled growl.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," Luke said. Sometimes he really did mean it.

It snarled blood at him, and he sighed through the dust and moved closer. Every step made it panic more, made it attempt to jerk back with slack that it didn't have. Instead of cowering like the rest of them usually did when he got that close, it roared at him, so loud the fury rang in his ears as it banged off the walls of its self-made echo chamber.

"You better be quiet," he spoke. "They probably already know you're in their trap."

Luke paused for a moment, waiting for a response that he knew he wouldn't get. He always waited, always hoped that one day he'd get a reply that wasn't a guttural sound, a disfigured bastard of human clarity and animal instinct. It never happened. Every one of them was too damaged, too far gone to even try. Jessica had not been so special after all. He'd known for long enough that she'd only been a fluke.

The feral made a grumbling noise, a clear response, even if it wasn't speech. Responding was a good sign, good enough that Luke could tell it was capable of understanding. Early stage, post turning, just enough brain damage that it wasn't a mindless animal made of tunnel vision and slobber.

He walked a wide berth around its bloodied perimeter, clicking his tongue so it knew where he was, since it didn't seem to be watching him. When he took a step closer, it stopped whining and growled, as if Luke's foot had hit a tripwire and turned on an alarm. "Easy." Luke kept his voice low, gentle. Like he was speaking to a dog and not a human. "Easy. I'm gonna get you free, okay?"

The feral only paused its growling in order to take a breath so it could growl harder, louder, and damn, was it _loud_. Echoing around the room, it made Luke feel like he was standing inside an engine. Anyone else might have been scared. It wasn't often someone could get so close to a feral and live.

Fortunately, Luke made a life out of mingling with zombies. He didn't want to, but it fell on him anyway and, really, they weren't much more than brain-damaged humans. Humans that had regressed to the point of humping naked in the streets and biting each other for dominance, but they were still people. They'd had lives. Hell, at this point all of them had been living for years after the scar only to end up succumbing to the second fire of the virus.

And Luke, well, all he could do was move forward, always.

Straight toward the feral, finally stepping into its range as it scrabbled at the floor, trying to get away while still growling its head off. Luke could see its teeth, bloodied and bright. At least he'd gotten to it before it lost any of them. It snarled, whimpered, twisted itself about, growled frantically. The wire dug deeper and the lazy fat drops began to fall faster from somewhere on its arm.

Luke pressed closer, not slowing, and the growl turned submissive, then rocketed straight up into a distressed wail. The feral's torn mouth faltered around syllables that it couldn't chain properly together, and even the nonsensical noises were more defined than Luke had ever heard from a feral before. Most of them started with an 'N' to his ears, which could have meant anything, but still. Still, still, still. Luke's life was full of them. In more ways than one.

"Don't panic. I'm not going to hurt you," he said, bending down to grab the taut, shivering wire, the other end still tied to one of the building's exposed support beams. The feral struggled for a moment and then stopped, apparently out of energy, its forehead coming to rest against the stained floor, heaving for breath and huffing blood out of its mouth.

"Hey, buddy. Just stay still," Luke breathed. "Nice and calm. I'm gonna get you free." He'd long gotten over the fact that it sounded like he was gentling a dog. It worked the best. Something about the tone of his voice. "Shh. Shh. I'm gonna get the wire off you. Just don't move."

Luke finally slipped into the feral's range, keeping his hand on the wire, ignoring the tremor shaking through the bloodstained metal. He didn't touch the feral, only its restraint, knowing how easily they could turn and snap, how whip-fast their reactions could be. He'd like to not have another feral break its jaw on his skin. Mercy killings hurt too much. Too many memories.

"Be cool, dude, be cool," Luke murmured as he bent down at the feral's side. It had gone still and silent, eyes fluttering around rapidly, breathing in short little pants because the wire was digging into its gut. Up this close, the tear-tracks through the grime and blood on its face became apparent. Crying, now, that was a rare sight. Their brains were always solidly locked into either rage, violent lust, or hunger. Or a mix of all three.

This twisted-up feral didn't seem to have a degree of any of those at the moment, all three replaced with terror and pain and confusion. On the face of what looked to have once been a guy near middle age, it looked like an adolescent. Full beard, of course, just like Luke, and a haircut so uneven even Pop wouldn't have been able to fix it.

Luke wrapped his fingers around the wire again and the feral shifted, making a protracted, high-pitched noise that sounded more like a whistle than a whimper.

"All right, easy, easy," Luke hushed, and trailed his fingers up to where the wire was tangled the tightest—its right arm and left leg. As soon as he touched the feral itself, it tried to jerk away, but there wasn't any more slack. "Shh-shh-shh. Don't panic." He slid his fingers between the wire and the feral's arm, shielding the inside of its elbow with his own skin as he twisted and broke apart the tightest coil with his free hand. Like a twist-tie on a loaf of bread. And man, did he miss bread.

The feral tried to heave itself backwards as the wire snapped, one leg shoving at the floor and smearing through the pools of blood. Luke snatched a handful of its clothes before it could slice its throat open with its own momentum. "Dude. Hold still." It wasn't free yet, but the razor wasn't ripping apart its arm anymore. He dragged it closer, like it was a wandering dog, and reached for the wire around its neck.

"Probably should have done that one first, huh? Stay still or you're gonna get your head lopped off."

It actually did stop moving, high-pitched noises bubbling in its throat. Listening was rare enough, but it was even more rare to catch one of them trying to talk. This one babbled something, a strange sequence of random syllables, panting hard, so close now that Luke could feel its breath on his chin. Attempting to speak was different than actually speaking, but just to see one trying made his heart hurt.

He thought of _her_ but spoke to the feral, keeping his voice low and calm. "You must be the alpha. Where's the rest of your pack?" Nowhere nearby. Maybe it was a loner.

It yammered and yowled at him with mismatched syllables. There was no sense to be found in its speech, but there were things that Luke could pick up from the tone of its voice, its body language. He'd gotten good at reading them, and when he was this close, it was like having a magnifying glass on a large-font dictionary.

It was shivering: adrenaline. Head bowed: submission. Rapid breathing: fear. A slumped posture: exhaustion. Eyes darting around rapidly: seeking an exit. At least, that's what it looked like. It wouldn't make eye contact with Luke, which just solidified the fact that it was submitting to him. Most of them did when they realized he couldn't be frightened away or bitten.

As he leaned in to get a closer look at the wire, he saw it baring its teeth out of the corner of his eye. He distantly noted how straight and intact they were—maybe this was a fresh turn. It didn't snap at him, though. Seemed more like a reflex. It did try to flinch away, and Luke clicked his tongue at it.

"Stop moving."

He got a garbled yowl in return, and both of its bloodied, ripped hands pawing ineffectively at his chest.

Luke sighed and shifted, carefully pinning the feral's ripped-up hoodie underneath his foot to keep it from bolting as he grabbed the wire around its neck with both hands. There were already a bunch of superficial scratches, but if it cut any deeper, Luke would have to do a burial instead of his usual feed and release. He wedged his whole palm between the razor and the feral's jugular vein, feeling the pulse jackhammering against his skin, and started breaking the wire apart.

Any second, he expected it to snap, lash out, and try to get a chunk of his face, but it stayed still, eyes flicking around, tongue licking idly at the blood around its lips. Even with the wounds, it started looking less like an injured, pissed-off zombie and more like an unlucky guy that got caught up in a razor wire snare trap. Until Luke snapped the wire and tugged it away from the feral's neck.

As soon as the binding came loose, it was moving, thrashing hard to one side, tossing itself to the floor as it lashed out with its uninjured leg, pieces of wire still caught up in its clothing. Luke felt the feral's boot graze against his jaw and leaned casually away, grunting in annoyance as it scrabbled at the floor, hissing and spitting like a wronged cat. It scrambled to its feet, raining blood, pausing only to give Luke a short snarl before bolting.

Luke sighed. "You aren't gonna get far," he said, to nobody, because the feral was already hopping over the edge of the building, out of sight. He heard a weird howling noise followed by a heavy thud and another yelp, and saw dust billowing up from the other side of the wall.

Damn stupid zombies. "I _told_ you!"

He started meandering after it, yanking the wire out of the building's support as he moved. Collecting it up, he coiled it tightly in his hands before twisting it together like he was wringing out a dish rag. Luke tossed the whole thing aside before moving to the half-collapsed wall and hopping up onto it, looking down.

There was the feral, curled up and whimpering, grasping its injured right arm and pedaling its feet against the ground as if it'd be enough to get it back up and moving. Luke dropped down lightly next to it—yeah, he'd lost weight, but who hadn't—and bent down, grabbing a handful of its clothes again, picking it up off the ground like a duffel bag.

It wailed in confusion, thrashed around, sprinkled blood all over the place.

"Man, just be cool for a second. I'm gonna get you out of here. Just gotta get to my car."

The old station wagon was sitting right where he'd parked it, halfway into someone's abandoned garage. He carried the feral there the whole way, ignoring its strengthless protesting, and somewhere around the last block, it passed out from blood loss or exhaustion or a mix of the two. Luke hefted it over his shoulder then, opening the wagon's hatch and setting it down gently in the cargo area behind the seats.

He dug out his first aid kit, the one in the tackle box that he kept clearly marked _CONTAMINATED_ , then went back to the feral, and got to work.

His medical skills weren't anything to brag about, but he took the rest of the wire off and hunted down the deepest of the wounds—one on its right arm, two on its left leg—and cleaned them out. There were a lot of scars on this one, old and new. Bruises and scrapes in different stages of healing. Bites, scratches, the leftovers that came from squabbles with other ferals. All normal.

Luke was feeling around for any other wounds or broken bones when his fingers brushed against something rough along the skin on its left shoulder. He frowned, because it couldn't be what he thought it was. Leaning in, he pulled the edge of the ripped jacket down to get a look, and—yeah. It was _exactly_ what he thought it was. Sweet Christmas.

Stitches. Three of them, in a neat little row. Far more professional than Luke's could ever be. He brushed his thumb over them and the nearly-healed wound that they were keeping together, then shifted and took the feral's left arm. The tremor was there. It was definitely infected.

He touched them again, just to be sure that they were real, and the answer stayed the same. Someone was taking care of this feral. Someone was able to get close enough to it to mend its wounds without being killed or infected themselves, because there was no way in Hell that another feral could have put them in so neatly. Luke sighed and rubbed the back of his head, trying to tell himself that it didn't really matter.

Except it did. It really did. There was someone else like him, a person as crazy as he was, mingling with the zombies, trying to take care of them, to let them live out the short remainders of their lives without being tortured, hunted, thrown in a pit and bet against. It meant everything.

"Where did you come from?" he asked, and never got an answer.

Luke touched the stitches again, wishing he had a camera, something to prove what he'd seen. It was hard to get people to listen when he had a reputation for being 'that stupid guy who thought ferals were still salvageable.' Jessica had really messed everything up for him.

He forced the thought out of his mind and dug around in the tackle box for the stapler. He'd traded a shotgun for it months ago, from some settlement down in D.C. Most of the time he was too hesitant to use it, afraid he'd crush it to pieces with his strength, but this feral needed something to close the wounds, and he had no suture.

Frowning, Luke gently tested the stapler out, firing two of them out into the street to gauge how hard he had to pull it. Not hard at all.

"Okay. You can do this," he mouthed to himself, letting out a breath as he wiped away the fresh blood from the deep cut in the feral's arm. At least it wasn't the shaking one, or they'd be screwed. "God, please don't wake up, little guy."

Luck was on his side that day. He popped in four of them without breaking the stapler or the feral's arm, and the feral didn't wake up from the pain, either. Luke tried to fight off how incompetent he felt with his badly-placed staples after seeing the sutures on its shoulder. Who the Hell had done it?

He left the cuts on the feral's leg alone, not wanting to push that little bit of fortune he had until it broke. They got band-aids. Little Frozen ones that had managed to not turn brittle and crumble from age. Luke laughed a little at himself, his position and predicament. Putting Disney band-aids on a zombie that apparently had a caretaker. He wondered what they'd think. Maybe they'd laugh, too.

Maybe he could meet them. Maybe the feral could show him the way there.

Luke sighed at his shitty work and put everything back in the tackle box, putting a hand on the feral's side to feel it breathe. Still alive. Breathing steady. He felt for its pulse. Rapid, if a little weak. Skin pale from blood loss. Hopefully it would wake up and not circle the drain until death.

He unfolded the blanket that he kept specifically for his... hobby, shaking the dust out, and draped it carefully over his little outsider. Yawning, he grabbed his tackle box and stepped out into the street, closing the wagon's hatch. It was silent outside, no distant cars or howling. Jersey obviously hadn't expected to catch this one, or they'd be right around the corner with their damn catch-poles and tasers. Luke guessed that they were hoping to kill it and dance on its corpse a week later when they came to check the traps.

Assholes, every one of them. More monstrous than the monsters they kept and starved.

Luke left the tackle box on the backseat and paused to check the pet barrier. He'd found it in one of the thousands of abandoned vehicles and permanently installed it. With his hands. It segregated whatever zombie he was trucking around from the rest of the wagon, which was a great help when he was trying to concentrate on driving.

The engine hummed as he turned the keys in the ignition, and he leaned back to adjust the rear-view mirror. No movement. He wasn't sure where to set it loose; they were somewhere in the northern part of Brooklyn. Brooklyn itself was largely deserted, picked clean, according to the good folks at Yonkers. No large packs. It'd be good enough.

He shifted into drive and started off, the wagon's raised, chained tires grumbling as they gripped to the dust and debris and forgotten skeletons, carrying Luke and his charge south. He tried not to obsess over those sutures. He failed.

\---

"Want out."

Luke jumped and yelled at the soft voice from the back of the wagon, slamming the brakes, so startled that he nearly parked the car in a window. He fumbled at the wheel, then turned around in his seat to find his rescued feral sitting up with its shaking fingers curled around the thick wire of the barrier.

"Oh, shi—shoot." Almost slipped up, there. "You talk?"

The feral licked its lips and repeated, "Want out." It was clearly struggling, but it was forming words. It was talking.

Luke nearly ripped the wagon's door off as he scrambled out into the street, feeling his heart race. A talking feral. He couldn't believe it—it sounded just like Jessica had when she—

No, it wasn't the time. He had to talk back to it, see where it came from, who was taking care of it, _why it was talking_. Luke grabbed the handle of the wagon's hatch and tugged it open, his head overflowing with questions and spilling into his mouth. He lifted it up, and was only able to blurt a, "What—" before the feral threw the blanket in his face, leapt out into the street, and took off like a bat out of Hell.

"No no no! Hey!" Luke sprinted after it, squinting against the light of the sun. It was injured and he was not; it only took a few seconds before he got a hold of its clothes and then its arm. He tried not to squeeze too hard, he tried not to hurt it, but he was sure he felt something shift and snap under his hand before the feral shrieked, short and loud and painful, and stopped trying to move right then and there. It tumbled to the ground and Luke tumbled after it, letting go of its arm and grasping its clothes again.

He didn't pin it down, terrified he'd snap its spine in half and kill it right there in the street and that'd be it for the only other talking feral he'd ever seen in his life. "Shit, I'm sorry, I'm—" he started to apologize, but the feral yowled over the top of him, frantically kicking out with its feet, clawing at the dust and dirt with its other hand.

"Off!" it yelped, sharp in his ear, so goddamn human that Luke couldn't believe it was coming out the mouth of a feral. "Off! Off! Not! Want off!"

Four words. It knew four words. That was already two more than Jessica.

Luke planted his arms on either side of the feral, caging it in as it flipped over in the dust, thrashed against his chest, snarled and spat and scrabbled at whatever it could reach.

"Hold still! I won't hurt you!"

"Off off off off off off!" Each word came out more garbled than the last one until it was little more than a bark. It was really freaking out, so much that Luke was afraid it was going to give itself a heart attack like that one a few months ago, but he couldn't let it go. He'd never see it again.

"Please, just stay still! Please!"

"Off! No!" Five words, holy shit, five words—fuck the swear jar—and it was using them like it knew what the words were for. It snarled in Luke's face, inches away, and Luke didn't flinch because he wasn't scared. Not of the feral. He was terrified of losing it.

"Just let me talk to you! Please just let me—"

It twisted about and roared, loud and true, ringing in Luke's ears, then scratched ineffectively at his arm before wriggling to one side and trying to sink its teeth into his skin. He couldn't move away fast enough to save it the pain of biting into something unbiteable. It snapped four or five times, rapidly, before realizing it wasn't going to work and uttering a rattling moan that Luke could have sworn was an attempt at a "Why?"

After that, it was all sharp, distressed noises, yelping and yowling, instinctively begging for help, as it must have done when it was first caught in the razor wire. More tears, too. It was absolutely terrified—more terrified than it had been in the trap.

"I just want to talk to you," Luke said, trying to keep his voice calm.

It hissed, clawed at the ground, and threw a handful of dust and dirt and God knew what else into Luke's face. Unbiteable, maybe, but his eyes were a totally different story. He flinched, grunting, and tried to blindly grasp at the feral's clothes to keep a hold on it, but it wiggled out from underneath him, threw more dust in Luke's face, and bolted.

Luke got to his feet, but by the time he got himself able to see again, it was long, long gone. It slipped into its natural environment where Luke wouldn't be able to find it no matter how hard he looked. He cursed aloud, pawing the dust off of his face. God, he was so stupid. Why did he even let it out in the first place?

It was a last resort, but he called into the city, "Please come back!"

He never got an answer and he knew he'd never see it again. Not after what he'd done to it. He clenched and unclenched his fist, remembering the feeling of the bone shifting beneath his grip. His ears were still ringing from its roar.

Luke cursed again, kicked the curb until it cracked down to the foundation, then leaned his head back, letting the tears roll down his cheeks, refusing to blame it on the dust. He'd gotten the lottery numbers correct and then immediately lit the winning ticket on fire.

The sun was setting by the time he finally left, turning away from the city and the thousands of buildings he'd lost the feral in. No clouds overhead at least. The sky was the strange color of dirty silver as the night began to sweep in. No more time. He had to leave. He'd have to take shelter at Yonkers again.

"I'll be back," he mumbled, shifting the wagon into drive. He remembered Jessica even though he wished he didn't, her shaking hand, her garbled words, her look of terror and relief when he pulled the trigger.

Luke chased the sunset, staying in the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of this is canon. Mostly the worldbuilding stuff. Please let me know if you liked it.
> 
> Beta by [Beguile.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile)
> 
> More of mine (and others') shorter works in the Sunshineverse can be found [here.](http://sunshineverse.tumblr.com/)


End file.
